]]>Following up on participation in BETT last year, one of the largest technology in education events in the world, ProsocialLearn has returned to the show this month armed with running games, our development platform and give-away activity cards.

Reception and interest in prosocial games, the ProsocialLearn platform and activities has been high throughout the event, with many interested educators and students visiting the stand to find out more about the project.

ProsocialLearn has also given away hundreds of packs of Prosocial Game Cards (also available as a free download here), which have been received extremely well by all, creating a nice bridge between a highly advanced software platform and the physical world of feelings and emotions.

Students have been enjoying playing cooperative sessions of ProsocialLearn’s Tower Together game as well, showing that teamwork really is the only way to win.

Over the next two days we hope to talk to many more schools and interested parties and to follow up on putting the fruits of the ProsocialLearn project into the hands of those that need it.

Download the latest brochure about ProsocialLearn here and contact us!

]]>Designing games about social skills doesn’t need to be difficult. Particularly if you have the right tools. Introducing Prosocial Game Design Toolkit!

Three tools designed to make it easy to create prosocial games. Developed by PlayGen as part of the ProsocialLearn game developer support network, meant to assist SMEs in the creative and collaborative development of prosocial games using ProsocialLearn methodology and game components.

Prosocial Game Design CanvasA one page visual tool that lays out all the elements of a learning game.

It provides the complete overview from the audience, inspirations, resources and outcomes to preparation, assessment, debriefing and generalisation. It also includes the core of the game goals, actions, feedback and fun elements.

The Prosocial Game Design Canvas is a versatile design tool, and can be used by game designers as well as teachers and students in groups to think about and design educational games for teaching skills.

Prosocial Game Design CardsCards to help you design games and activities to teach social skills.

The Prosocial Game Deisn cards provide a range of skills for feelings, friendship and cooperation together with game mechanics and teaching methods. Use them to design games, develop stories or create in-class activities.

The toolkit contains print-and-play version of the cards together with quick start guide.

Drawing on a wealth of research, this practical toolkit can be used to quickly design cooperative games, simplifying the decision-making process and providing quick access to the key dynamics that define the nature of the game.

Download it all here!
Use the link above to download all three tools and designing your own games and activities to teach social and emotional skills today!

]]>ProsocialLearn, a 36-month project funded by the European Union, has produced a short video that introduces the platform and highlights some of the current prosocial games in development.

ProsocialLearn provides a unified platform for schools, teachers, game developers and students to find, develop, share and play games designed to promote prosocial behaviours.

The first set of games on the platform includes The Chase (collaborate to climb the hill and escape the giggle monster!), Laika (on the trail of the “Golden Bone” – a game about feelings and learning about others), Lost in Space (working together to get through the vastness of space), Pushy Paddles (a cooperative multiplayer maths puzzle game), Tower Together (a game about sharing and working together to build the tallest tower) and The Season’s Soup (an exciting labyrinth game for developing collaboration skills).

View the ProsocialLearn platform and games video:

The ProsocialLearn platform and games pilots are currently running in Greece, Italy and the UK. ProsocialLearn is also participating in BETT 2018, which brings teachers and learners together with the latest educational ideas, practices and technologies, on 24-27 January in London.

More about the ProsocialLearn platform and games on show at BETT 2018 here and contact us here to learn more about our wide range of learning games and educational material for teaching social and emotional skills to youngsters.

]]>Several new reports by ProsocialLearn consortium members are now available for download.

“(Final) Prosocial Affect Fusion and Player Modelling” (D3.4) describes game technology capabilities for observing and analysing the performance of players aiming to learn prosocial skills using digital games in schools.

“1st Platform Operations Report” (D5.6) presents a first version of the ProsocialLearn platform operations report, which covers systems integration of all the ProsocialLearn technologies and will operation of the ProsocialLearn platform for development of games.

To maximise the project impact, three additional SME game companies have joined the consortium in the last year of the project. “Evaluation Report with Proposed New Partners” (D6.1) is an evaluation study giving details about these companies and the roles they play in the context of the ProsocialLearn project.

“Prototype Prosocial Games” (D6.2) briefly describe the status and development process for the ProsocialLearn prosocial games prototypes.

These recent reports, along with previous ProsocialLearn publications and other deliverables, are available for download here.

]]>Within the activities of the ProsocialLearn project, the construction of a dedicated online educator community has been a primary objective. The launch of the final version of this community, ProsocialLearn Community Teacher’s Space, will take place in the coming weeks.

The ProsocialLearn Community Teacher’s Space is a common space where teachers can interact and learn about prosociality, as well as the use of serious games to improve the prosocial skills of their pupils. Community “ambassadors” will also be responsible for encouraging participation in community discussions, cooperation and sharing across Europe.

]]>Emotions with Friends is an educational game to support children and teachers in classroom activities relating to the demonstration and recognition of emotions and social cues.

The game combines the fun of playing with virtual characters and discovering a range of different emotional and social expressions. The game is intended to be used in a class room environment as an aid for discussions surrounding facial expressions and other social signals, in addition to enriching the emotion vocabulary of students. It also enables teachers and students to construct their own sequences of facial expressions for others to view and play.

Emotions with Friends has been built using a software kit specalised for aiding in the development of social demonstration games that utilise sophisticated 3D computer characters. The kit represents initial steps towards opening the creation of 3D social games to those with limited technical skills and resources.

More details are available in the following ProsocialLearn publications:

]]>In September, ProsocialLearn consortium member CERTH presented the project at two events in Athens, Greece.

On 5 September, Dr. Kosmas Dimitropoulos gave a lecture titled “Human Motion Analysis in Interactive Environments: Capturing, Recognition and Adaptation” at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), within the framework of the H2020 Terpsichore project summer school. In the lecture, he also presented the main objectives and results of the ProsocialLearn project.

On 6-8 September, ProsocialLearn in cooperation with the H2020 Mathisis project organised a workshop entitled “Adaptive and Personalized Game-based Learning Environments” during the VS-Games (9th International Conference on Virtual Worlds and Games for Serious Applications) conference in Athens, Greece.

In total, six papers were presented in the workshop from the members of the ProsocialLearn and Mathisis project:

“The Value of Establishing a Community of Teachers for the Gamification of Prosocial Learning” (S. Cobello, E. Milli, P. Pιrez Berganza, N. Zygouritsas)

]]>ProsocialLearn consortium member HypeSlugs is developing TakeOver (working title), a three-player game that teaches children collaboration and teamwork skills.

Three robots – an engineer, a researcher and a navigator – embark on a space mission to discover a new planet. The puzzle tactics gameplay requires focus, memory and attention skills, as well as planning and strategic thinking as a team.

The game utilises the ProsocialLearn technology platform, e.g. storing data about the game play sessions, facial recognition and player difficulty adaptation. An early prototype is completed, and a MVP (minimum viable product) is on its way. Children 8-10 years old are the target audience.

A release version of TakeOver is expected in the fall, and the game will be tested in European schools late this year.

About HypeSlugs
HypeSlugs is a Romanian game development studio founded in 2016, with a strong background in game design, development and analytics.

]]>Update: The Bunny & the Bird game in developmenthttp://prosociallearn.eu/update-bunny-bird-game-development/
Thu, 01 Jun 2017 01:54:19 +0000http://prosociallearn.eu/?p=1347New game teaches children the value of helping each other

]]>ProsocialLearn consortium member Aniway is developing The Bunny & the Bird (working title), a game that teaches the children the value of helping each other; cooperation is needed to find a way through a maze while avoiding danger, thus reaching a common goal.

The game utilises the ProsocialLearn technology platform, e.g. storing data about the game play sessions. An early prototype is completed, and a MVP (minimum viable product) is on its way. Children 7-10 years old are the target audience.

A release version of The Bunny & the Bird is expected in the fall, and the game will be tested in European schools late this year.

About Aniway
Aniway is a Finnish game development company founded in 1999, and has extensive experience on developing all kinds of games, including applied games.

]]>ProsocialLearn in cooperation with the H2020 project Mathisis is organising a workshop entitled “Adaptive and Personalized Game-based Learning Environments” during the VS-Games conference in Athens, Greece on 6-8 September.

The submission period for workshop papers is now open. Important deadlines are:

Paper submission deadline: 31 March
Notification of acceptance: 1 May
Camera-ready: 20 May

Workshop scope
The need for sophisticated learning environments as well as novel educational platforms (Interactive White Boards, Tablets, Robots), which will respond to the requirements of a future educational framework and provide capabilities for automatic assessment of learner’s engagement, behavior and progress, has significantly increased the research interest on intelligent adaptation and personalization techniques in game-based learning. Artificial intelligence is fundamental in order to implement game-based learning environments, which employ online or offline adaptation for optimizing learning. In addition, techniques for real-time signal acquisition, processing and inferring, accompanied by immediate and rapid content generation mechanisms have created new opportunities and perspectives towards this direction. Finally, novel actuators, such as educational robots provide new means enabling new insights in the overall educational process. The aim of this workshop is to bring together researchers and practitioners, from both industry and academia, interested in any aspects of machine learning and artificial intelligence, which can be effectively used to improve game-based learning environments.

Workshop topics
This workshop is dedicated to studies, applications, algorithms and new methods in the multi-disciplinary field of game-based learning environments, with a specific focus on adaptation and personalization-related issues. Papers for this workshop must address relevant topics in the design, implementation or field study of adaptive learning environments, also based on video games, sensors, natural human-computer interaction, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

About the VS-Games conference
VS-Games 2017 will be organized with full support of the host institution, National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) Athens, Greece, September 6-8 2017. The conference will take place on the NTUA campus. The ninth International Conference in Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications (2017) aims to meet the significant challenges of the cross-disciplinary community that work around these serious application areas by bringing the community together to share case studies of practice, to present virtual world infrastructure developments, as well as new frameworks, methodologies and theories, and to begin the process of developing shared cross-disciplinary outputs.